How well do those Sonic Voom headphones work for AC3?

[Davage]

I'd appreciate any sort of feedback as to how well those Sonic Voom headphones work for AC3 decoding. Do they stay in sync with the video properly? Once they're set up and working, is there any tweaking required?

The reason I'm asking all of these questions is because I'm looking at the idea of setting up a system with strictly the PBS feeds on it for a family in my area. Their daughter has a brain tumor, and with all of the travel expenses required for her treatments, subscription tv is one of the items that was put on the chopping block. They're using just rabbit ears for their TV, and here in Canada there are no PBS stations available over the air. I'm toying with the idea of giving them a fixed dish pointed at the bird with the PBS feeds. Since they're not technical people, they may not be accustomed to tinkering as much as I am with electronic toys. Do those headphones work good with a Fortec receiver? Is there a line-out on the decoder portion that I could wire into the av plugs on a VCR so that the VCR does the signal combining of the audio and video into a single coax cable?

Any feedback is appreciated. And I'm sorry if these questions have been answered in other threads - I've just been so darn busy lately, and I am hoping that the good folks here at Satellite Guys could answer my questions to save me digging through the old threads post by post.

Thanks SatelliteGuys!

 

[schlever]

Davage, I use one of those units with my Fortec Ultra with no problems. It sounds great actually. All I've done is connected a stereo plug with 2 rca ends into one of the headphone jacks, then plugged that into my stereo input jacks. You could do the same thing with a VCR quite easily.

 

[phlatwound]

Davage, good on you for trying to help those folks out. I am going to bid on a set of those today, here is a link to where I found them on eBay:

New Sonic Voom surround sound headphone New Sealed PKG - eBay (item 150235551596 end time Apr-18-08 11:45:00 PDT)

Sorry I don't know how to make that link "smaller".

There is a good thread that talked about this from about a year ago, and here is a post from that thread that has a review.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/845259-post41.html

I read the whole thread and it was very positive, sounded like a lot of people gave them the thumbs up back then, and Iceberg re-confirmed that yesterday. Look like you can get them for about $20, shipped.

Edit: noticed you were in Canada so not sure about the shipping?

 

[Davage]

I've emailed the seller asking about shipping charges to Canada for those headphones...


Thanks for the help guys! I might just buy a set for myself too. Right now if I want to watch the AC3 broadcasts, I have to watch them on my PC tuner. It would be nice to watch PBS on the regular TV.

Does anybody know if these headphones are available for sale just over-the-counter at any major type stores in North Dakota or Minnesota? ie: Target, Walmart, etc? I'm making a trip to Walker Minnesota in July.. I might pick up 2 or 3 sets of them if I can find a store that sells them at a decent price. It'll be nice to have a backup set, just in case 1 set fails.

 

[phlatwound]

I've emailed the seller asking about shipping charges to Canada for those headphones...


Thanks for the help guys! I might just buy a set for myself too. Right now if I want to watch the AC3 broadcasts, I have to watch them on my PC tuner. It would be nice to watch PBS on the regular TV.

Does anybody know if these headphones are available for sale just over-the-counter at any major type stores in North Dakota or Minnesota? ie: Target, Walmart, etc? I'm making a trip to Walker Minnesota in July.. I might pick up 2 or 3 sets of them if I can find a store that sells them at a decent price. It'll be nice to have a backup set, just in case 1 set fails.

I was not able to find them in any of our local Wal Marts (or Wal Mart online), and when I was looking on Google for them this week I didn't find many places that even had them online.

 

[Mr Tony]

yeah sadly I havent seen them here in MN at all


on a side note

The reason I'm asking all of these questions is because I'm looking at the idea of setting up a system with strictly the PBS feeds on it for a family in my area. Their daughter has a brain tumor, and with all of the travel expenses required for her treatments, subscription tv is one of the items that was put on the chopping block. They're using just rabbit ears for their TV, and here in Canada there are no PBS stations available over the air. I'm toying with the idea of giving them a fixed dish pointed at the bird with the PBS feeds

That is a really awesome thing you are doing for them. If I remember correctly, doesn't Ontario have a PBS type channel (TVO)? They're not close enough to a transmitter?

A fixed dish for PBS would be cool due to the multiple channels on there

 

[schlever]

Ice, up here in Canada our public access stations are only carried on cable or satellite, not OTA. They are usually funded by the Province, and most have some interesting programming on them. Others are SCN in Saskatchewan and Knowledge TV out in Alberta.

I too commend Davage for his idea! It once again shows what kind of people are into this hobby!:up

 

[RVD420]

That's a great thing to do Davage.

 

[Mr Tony]

Ice, up here in Canada our public access stations are only carried on cable or satellite, not OTA. They are usually funded by the Province, and most have some interesting programming on them. Others are SCN in Saskatchewan and Knowledge TV out in Alberta.

I knew about SCN, Access & Knowledge from the Starchoice system I have, but I thought TVO had a OTA network

edit..per wiki they do
List of TVOntario transmitters - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[schlever]

edit..per wiki they do
List of TVOntario transmitters - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cool, we have ExpressVU at the cottage in Ontario, so never knew that. May have to take a set of bunny ears out there in a few weeks and try it out as it looks like they have a transmitter in Kenora.

 

[Mr Tony]

looks like there is 4 channels there...CBC, SRC, TVO & CJTV (CTV Kenora)..TVO looks decent power wise there

2 CBWFT-7 SRC CBWFT Winnipeg 3.8kW Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
8 CBWAT CBC CBWT Winnipeg 4kW Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
13 CJBN CTV/Global 177W Norcomm Communications
44 CICO-TV-91 TVO CICA Toronto 115kW ON Educ. Comm. Authority

sorry for going off topic

 

[Davage]

I talked with the family via email, and they are thrilled at the idea of having some tv for the kids to watch. They have a dish on the side of the house (not sure what type of dish yet), but they cancelled their subscription when the travel expenses for chemo started. Yes, we have free healthcare here in Canada, but the cost of travel is still there. The specialists are a 2 hour drive away each week. Hotel bills and the ever increasing cost of gas is a huge issue on a weekly basis.

I just couldnt' imagine the heartache they go through every week during the treatments. To see a 3 year old girl needing chemo treatments breaks my heart.

If there's anybody reading this in the London Ontario area who's got a spare 30" reflector kicking around, let me know. I've got plenty of LNBs, and I'm working on getting a receiver. I'll probably end up giving them my Fortec Classic NA and get a new one. Or plan B will be to give them a Satpros receiver and point a dish at Galaxy 10. It isn't as rich in kids programming as the PBS channels, but at least it's more than the rabbit ears are providing right now.

Thanks to Iceberg for doing some testing of the Satpros receiver to see if it does AC3.. (It doesn't).

 

[Mr Tony]

Davage...check your PM

 

[Keith Brannen]

I knew about SCN, Access & Knowledge from the Starchoice system I have, but I thought TVO had a OTA network

edit..per wiki they do
List of TVOntario transmitters - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And the London OTA transmitter for TVO is fairly strong, too. From their website: "TVO’s over-the-air signal reaches 98.4% of the geographic territory of the province."

 

[phlatwound]

Finally got my Sonic Voom unit hooked up tonight and it works great. I tried the optical and coaxial inputs and both worked without a hitch. If anyone wants to hook it up like I did, with a stereo mini plug to Y RCA males, to go into the tv audio inputs, Wal Mart has that adapter w/6' cord for about $4 w/tax.

I'm going to have to pigtail some more 110V electric hookups before I can leave it hooked up, all my plugs are full now.

Has anyone run this unit off battery power for extended periods of time, if so how long till it needed a charge?

 

[Davage]

I've got a set of these headphones on order. I'm looking forward to seeing them in action. I might end up buying another set of them for myself for AC3 decoding... I bought 1 set, and I really should have talked with the ebay seller to see if I could combine shipping on 2.. Oh well. I'll give them a shot with my Fortec Classic NA to see how they work, and if they work well, I'll get a set for me. The set I've got on order is for the girl with the brain tumor so that she can have LOTS of PBS channels.. I am very anxious for the equipment to all come together so that I can go install it.

 

[FTAsquirrel]

It really works good for me also, have had the same setup for almost a year now and the PBS channels are great with it.

 

[guapoharry]

Yes, we have free healthcare here in Canada, but the cost of travel is still there.

To call Canadian health care free sounds to some people like the cost is nil. (nothing)

I don't agree.

It's only free if you don't pay taxes. Eh?


Federal + Province / Territory Income Tax

What are the income tax rates in Canada?

Federal + Province / Territory Sales Tax

Taxation in Canada - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[SATire]

I'm looking for AC2 to RCA adapters for my receivers. Tony put me onto this thread so wondering if anyone has a model number for the sonic voom?
Better, anyone know of a non headset style of these things?

 

[Pixl]

The headphone set is about the only thing around affordable. You can get them for less than $20 from Amazon. The best way is to cut the headphones off and solder a RCA cable to the end of the wires. If you try using a mini to RCA cable bypassing the headphone cable you will have low level audio. Good enough for some people. Here is a thread explaining it in detail.

Jim

http://www.satelliteguys.us/free-air-fta-discussion/224438-cyberhome-ac3-headphone-wire-colors.html

Also a link to Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Cyberhome-CH-...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1282162283&sr=8-1